Never Make a Bet with Martha Kent
by Renee6061
Summary: Jonathan loses a bet, thanks to Clark.


Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

Author's note: Just a bit of Kent family silliness, inspired by Jonathan's season 4 look. (Much as I love JS, I wish he would leave his hair the heck alone!) Major thanks to Smallvillian, who not only edited but also came up with an idea for the bet when I was hopelessly stuck. Couldn't have done it without you! Thanks also to daffodilly; her story "Unmentionables" helped me think up an ending to this one.

Never Make a Bet with Martha Kent

"Hi, guys, I'm home," Clark called as he pushed open the kitchen door and dropped his book bag on a chair. He paused for a moment, looking around, but there was no one in sight, and the only sound to greet him was the ticking of the kitchen clock. He focused his hearing to make sure his parents weren't in the house before going out to check the barn.

"Oh, dammit, Martha!" His father's voice booming in his supersensitive ears made him jump, nearly knocking over bag and chair together. The next thing he heard was a burst of laughter from his mother. What on earth . . . ?

Clark hurried toward the bathroom, where the sounds were coming from, and knocked on the door. "Mom? Dad? What's going on?"

He heard another muffled curse before Jonathan yelled through the door, "Don't come in!"

"Sweetheart, he's gonna have to see it sometime," Clark heard his mother say. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

"Not if I live in the bathroom from now on."

"Uh, Dad? X-ray vision, remember?" Clark tapped on the door again for emphasis.

He heard a long sigh that was almost a groan, and then the door opened a few inches. Clark stuck his head inside to see Jonathan, with a towel around his neck, staring glumly in the mirror, and Martha standing about half a step behind him with a triumphant grin on her face. Clark followed their gaze, and did a double take. "Dad! What did you do?"

"I was dumb enough to make a bet with your mother, that's what," Jonathan muttered, rubbing at his head with the towel.

Clark stepped into the bathroom, carefully looking his dad over. "I take it you lost," he ventured.

Jonathan shot him a look that made Clark grateful that his father didn't have heat vision. "No, Clark. I just thought I'd bleach my hair for fun."

"Oh, stop it," Martha scolded. "It's not bleached. I just gave him some highlights, Clark. It looks adorable, don't you think?"

"Yeah, adorable," Clark agreed, grinning.

His father eyed him sourly. "It might sound more convincing if you could say it with a straight face."

"It looks great, Dad, really," Clark insisted, straightening his face accordingly. "It just—surprised me a little, that's all." He walked around behind his father, then back again, studying him from all angles—or at least as much as he could see past the towel. It really didn't look too bad, at that. "You'd better keep away from my school," he quipped, "or the girls will all go nuts."

Jonathan snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure old guys with bleached hair are all the rage these days."

"It is _not _bleached," Martha corrected him again, patiently. "It's _highlighted_."

Jonathan's reflection cocked an expectant eyebrow at her.

"And you're _not_ old," she added hastily, slipping her arms around his waist from behind.

"He'd better not be," Clark pointed out, leaning against the doorframe. "He's the same age you are."

"Clark," his mother said disapprovingly. "It's not polite to mention a lady's age." She reached up and rescued the towel from Jonathan before his impatient rubbing could reduce it to soggy shreds. "And you, quit that. It's not going to come off."

Clark's eyes went from one of them to the other. "Okay, so . . . am I allowed to ask what this bet was about?"

"Better not," Martha warned. "It's your fault he lost."

"_My _fault?" Clark echoed. "Why? What did I do?"

Jonathan sighed again. "It was the morning after I came home from the hospital. Your mom happened to mention that you hadn't asked about Lana yet, and—I don't know, I guess we were both in kind of a silly mood." He glanced down at his wife, who had both arms around him again, and gently put his hands over hers. "Anyway, your mother ended up betting me that you couldn't go another 24 hours without bringing up Lana, and . . . " He shrugged, as if to say the rest was history.

Clark winced. He remembered wondering why a horrified look had flashed across his father's face when he'd asked his parents if Lana was back from Paris yet. Now it made sense. "Aw, man. I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't know."

Jonathan looked at him again, this time with a reluctant smile tugging at his lips. Clark knew all was forgiven when his dad reached out and ruffled his hair. "I know you didn't, son. My fault. I should have known better."

"Told you so," Martha said sweetly, leaning her head against Jonathan's back.

"Well, if I won a bet with Dad, I'd hold out for something better than coloring his hair," Clark chuckled. "Or at least I'd color it bright pink."

"Only if you wanted to spend the rest of your life mucking out stalls," Jonathan retorted.

Martha raised her voice slightly to be heard above the bickering. "I just wanted to know if it would turn out as cute as I thought it would." She lifted her head again and smiled dreamily at her husband's reflection. "And it did."

"If you wanted to know _that_ badly, you could've done it this summer," Jonathan suggested, smiling back at her. "I wouldn't have had to know a thing about it."

Clark turned to look directly at his mother, watchful of her reaction, but her expression didn't change, though he thought her voice quivered a little when she spoke. "Maybe I should've," she mused, standing on tiptoe to run a hand through Jonathan's still-damp hair. "Think what a nice surprise you'd have had when you woke up."

Jonathan and Clark exchanged a quick, relieved glance in the mirror. Martha was still having some trouble talking about what they had all gone through that summer. Clark had noticed his father dropping casual references to those events into everyday conversation, as if trying to make them seem normal and thus easier to discuss. This was the first time she'd actually responded to any of those comments. Maybe it was starting to work.

"Yeah, and think how he would have screeched when he saw your 'nice surprise,'" Clark replied.

"Like a little girl," Martha agreed, her voice cheerful again. "You should have heard him whine the whole time I was doing this."

"All right, you two," Jonathan protested, swiping the towel back from Martha and giving one last, futile rub to his hair. Clark smirked, reading his father's thoughts on his face. Letting himself be defaced to cheer up his wife was all very well, but letting himself be compared to a little girl was pushing it.

"Yeah, I'll bet he did," Clark teased. The words brought a new thought to his mind. "By the way, Mom, what did you have to do if _you_ lost the bet?"

He was surprised to see a blush rise to his mother's face, as Jonathan grinned.

"Honey, don't you have chores you're supposed to be doing?" Martha asked irrelevantly, making a show of looking at her watch. "You'd better get a move on." She put a hand on Clark's shoulder and began to steer him out the door.

Clark raised an eyebrow of his own. "That bad, huh?" It was all he had time to say before Martha shoved him into the hall. But as the door closed firmly behind him, he could hear Jonathan's voice, mimicking the gushing tone Martha had used earlier.

"Aw, come on, sweetheart. I told you, you would have looked _adorable_ in that outfit."

"Jonathan, shhh! He can still hear you!" Despite her embarrassed tone, Martha couldn't keep a giggle out of her voice.

"Man," Clark mumbled again as he retreated down the hallway, pursued by the sound of his parents' laughter. "Remind me never to make a bet with you two."

The End


End file.
